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Jaina Philosophy and Religion
end of the period of the dawn of right faith, there is the rise of the most intense passions, the soul falls down from the right faith to this stage. Thus, this stage is the state of fall from right faith to delusion or wrong faith. Once the process of downfall starts, it does not take much time to land on the first step. So, this stage is of a moments's duration only. The souls climbing up the ladder of subsidence fall down to this stage. But those climbing up the ladder of destruction never fall down to this stage. The souls falling down to this stage necessarily fall back to the first stage. Thus, the souls do not pass on to the second stage from the first, but only halt at it for a moment, while falling down from some higher stage of spiritual development.
3. Miśra-guņasthāna In this stage, the soul is characterised by a peculiar internal transformation which is of the form of a mixture of right faith and wrong faith. When a soul suddenly for the first time sees truth, it is struck with wonder. Its old tendencies drag it back while the new ones drag it forward. This type of tug of war lasts for some time. Afterwards, it either lapses into mithyātva or attains samyaktva. This stage is spiritually more advanced than the first two, because here there is an absence of the most intense passions. But here, there is no perfect discrimination of what is right from what is wrong. Here there is a mixture of right faith and wrong faith. That is, the soul in this stage has neither faith nor the absence of faith regarding the right path, but it has the vacillating internal state. Two opposite forces work upon it-one dragging it towards truth and the other dragging it towards untruth. As a result of this, it either falls back to the first stage or rises up to a higher stage of right faith.
4. Avirati-samyagdęsti
The meaning of this term is right faith accompanied by non-abstinence'. The soul at this stage acquires the right faith, but is lacking in spiritual efforts, that is, it cannot abstain from the wrong path and evil
and 'āsādana' means 'intense passions, viz., anger, etc. that slacken, weaken or shake the right faith'. The stage called Sāsādana is characterised by the rise of intense passions that cause downfall and destroy right faith. Sāsvādana is also the name of this gunasthāna. It means 'associated with the experience of the taste--the taste of the right faith or inclination which is being “vomitted".'
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